


The Past Haunts Me

by CawCawAJ



Category: Everyman HYBRID
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Stephanie's only mentioned, a failed iteration of the boys, in this iteration she's already dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 00:26:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20462009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CawCawAJ/pseuds/CawCawAJ
Summary: How many iterations have they been through? How many more will go on?Wherein Jeff's been bitten by The RAKE and things become clearer





	The Past Haunts Me

**Author's Note:**

> I... Wrote this during a really bad spot. I was delirious, deprived of sleep, absolutely paranoid. It creeped me out a little bit when I went back to read this. I didn't proofread anything, so it's all as is. 
> 
> Also, I know it's Saturday and I missed my Friday upload. I'm going to move upload day to Saturday, the weekend's the only time I can actually write anything since I'm doing work and school back to back. You'll still get content, just on Saturdays instead.

The crunch of crackling bones filled his ears uneasily. Trapped in a loop of being unable to know what was real and what was not had left Jeff teetering on the edge of instability. He could almost, almost feel what he was hearing. He could almost feel the crunching of his bones underneath his thinly stretched skin.

Outstretching an arm, he cringes as he watches the awkward way it extends. The motion itself feels foreign to Jeff somehow as if it isn't something he does thousands of time in a single day. He rolls his wrist with morbid curiosity as it makes an ungodly sound at the action. He thinks that means he's broken it, yet he can still fully move his arm without feeling anything wrong. It's unsettling, seeing and hearing something so painful but...

He doesn't know if he should tell Vinny or Evan about it yet. He doesn't...

He doesn't know. He doesn't know anything anymore. He can't trust himself with anything anymore. He twists his arm to reveal his forearm, marveling for a moment at the nearly-parchment paper yellow coloring of the bandage attached. He brings his other hand up and pokes at it as if poking something dead with a stick.

He's losing grip with reality.

The bandage peels away stickily, wet with the yellow and brown snotty pus that had colored the otherwise white wrappings. It had only been a week...

Only a week since he'd been injured. Just. One. Week. What did that get him? He stares long and hard at the healing injury, poking at the tender skin. The gnarled bite is borderline reopening at this point, gangrenous in appearance and rotten in smell. Or, perhaps that's Jeff smelling himself in general. The stench of death is stuck to the college student, unwilling to part.

The moment his finger meets his wound and the pressure of the pressing is bestowed, Jeff watches with muted horror as the wound responds to such a touch with the gentle teardrop of brown sludge. He wants to gag, to vomit whatever is left in his stomach from four days ago. By this point, he's running on stomach acid and water. He can't bring himself to ingest anything else.

He cringes yet again when an unavoidable twitch erupts from him. He hears the bones in his back grind against each other and snap.

Where are they? (Home.)

Where are Vinny and Evan? (Home.)

Where is he? (Nowhere.)

He lets out a strangled breath that comes out more like a feverish rasp. He wants to scream, he wants to wake up... He wants to do a great many things. None of them are obtainable. The truth of the matter is that he's so incredibly caged in his own skin that he can't do a Single. Damn. Thing. He's stuck in a box, compressed down to half his normal size just trying to fit into that box, he can't move in that cramped space.

A whisper catches at the very edge of his hearing and his bloodshot and purple-ringed eyes dart to the noise, ready to follow it. The thoughts that fill Jeff's head in that moment disturb him far more than he has the strength to convey. Instead, he hears his neck crackle and pop about four times as he tilts his head to the side in awe of the noise. He slumps down, falling bonelessly to his knees as he stretches out his abnormally long and pale arms. The grinding of the bones against one another in noise persists at that moment, but he can't find himself to care, he's so caught up by trying to understand what the whisper is saying to him. He bends his elbows and brings himself closer to the floor, nearly feigning a pushup as his shoulderblade shift painfully visibly on his back. The whispering had moved from the far corner of the dining room and was now coming from the floorboards, from his basement.

He presses his ear to the wood as he closes his eyes. The whispering is louder now, but he's just on the edge of being able to hear the actual words being said, being able to understand them. That is where he stays, glued to the floor as he listens, listens, and _listens_ to the rushed speaking.

"What?" he finally rasps.

His voice is so foreign to his own ears as he seemingly begs the voices to let him understand. He doesn't know why, why doesn't he understand? He can hear it, he can hear them.

Jeff screams as if he's been burned. His eyes fly open and...

...He's in the forest. He's in the forest?

Almost immediately after the revelation hits him, he's blinded by a bright light. The harsh white of the flashlight draws an inhuman noise from his lips, something of a cross between a shriek and a hiss of pain. He hears voices around him, sees a blurry figure trying to talk to him. The person is looming over him and his voice sounds so far away and he doesn't _understand_.

He freezes when the figure crouches down to his level and grabs his arms, jostling him. He can't focus on the person's face. The blur of his vision bleeds heavily and he can't make it go away.

The person holding him shakes him as he starts getting louder. He draws a pained gasp from Jeff as he hears the very loud audible pop of something. He felt that, he felt the pain this time. It seems to shock him to the core like a lightning strike, and suddenly he can hear everything with such clarity at once that it nearly breaks him.

He feels wetness at his cheeks and thinks it might be from the pain he can suddenly feel so harshly within his dying shell. The person's voice is so much louder than he thought it would've been and he is _terrified_.

"Evan! Evan let him go!! You're hurting him!"

There's another person there?

"What did you do? Jeff, what the fuck did you do??" this Evan person is speaking now. He doesn't know what to say, what should he say?

Who's Jeff? Who's Evan? Where is he?

He is Jeff. Evan is his friend. He's in the woods.

"E..." he nearly chokes on the single vowel, "Ev..?"

He feels like he's underwater for the briefest of moments. He swallows dryly, parched. He hasn't had anything to drink in what feels like days.

"Jeff." another voice is speaking to him. He's since been let go by Evan and is now face to face with another blurry individual.

"Jeff. Listen to me very, very carefully. You need to tell us what happened. What is the last thing you remember?"

Behind this new figure, he can see the one he thinks to be Evan pacing around behind him. He lets out a breath, and a sharp grab of his attention from the new figure forces him to look away.

"Home... H..." Jeff struggles to talk, finding it to hurt so much, "Whispers... Bas... B... Base..."

He can't get the last part of the word out before his dying voice gives out and he coughs. It hits him like a freight train and he's so shaken by it, full-body coughing in his pained state. One good cough catches him in the back of the throat and he lurches to the side, away from the blurry figure, and vomits.

It smells, it smells so bad. He can't see it in the dark until Evan, the one holding the flashlight he guesses, shines it on him to see him hunched over the mess he's just made.

"Oh shit, oh fuck. Vinny, Dude, what the fuck do we do??"

It wasn't blood he vomited up, but Jeff can only assume that what did come up isn't any better. It stinks _so fucking bad_ and he can only shake uncontrollably as he is unable to tear his eyes away from the blurred splotches. He tries so desperately to see what it is, but he still can't focus.

"Jeff, Jeff are you okay?" the second person, he can only guess their name is Vinny? Yes, this person reaches for him.

He feels the sensation of someone tapping his arm, and that's when he knows that he's gone back to being unable to feel anything. Still, just at the mere sensation of someone making physical contact with him results in an inhuman hiss of a growl to come from his tired vocal cords. He jumps away immediately, pressing himself against the harsh bark of the nearest tree. Grounded, he needs to be grounded. He can't stand on his own now.

It's then when the whispers just out of reach for him to understand begin anew. His eyes leave the figures that seem too scared to get any closer and dart off to the side. He breathes heavily through his mouth, trying so hard to just _understand_.

He stares into the darkness of the woods as he strains for the voices to just let him listen before...

Before...

Before Evan follows his line of sight and shines the flashlight in the direction of Jeff's vision. It's then, when he sees what's in the dark, that the whispers finally right themselves and he can understand.

_Hello Friend. It's been so long._

Jeff watches the tall man in the distance disappear, and he can't help but moan like he's been hurt.

He's cut off by the cracklings in his mind as the second whispering voice picks up.

_I forgot what you looked like before. You looked so... Weak. Come back to us now, come on. Why not? You remember us, don't you?_

The second voice breaks out in echoed laughter that... He can only close his eyes as he listens to it. Evan, it sounds like him, but no, he knows it's not.

When he opens his eyes again, the blur to his vision is gone and he stares at them, at his friends.

The voice of one other speaks to him delicately as he stares at them. She's gentle in her caress and he feels almost lulled away.

Stephanie...

He breaths out raspily once more as he opens his mouth.

"They're... Us."

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wrote this with the complete delirium and insomnia seeping into my ass and making me fucking crazy. 
> 
> Short and sweet explanation to what's going on above? Our Mining Town Four are stuck in a loop of this shit. That you already knew, but I think my crazy-ass mind at the time thought about the very first iteration of them, which probably happened before the Fairmount iteration. 
> 
> Essentially, what I'm trying to say is that Vinny is Slender, Evan is Habit, and Jeff is The Rake. The shit they're facing is the twisted monsters of their first iteration selves.
> 
> I dunno why, I was fucking shocked up and shit when I wrote this
> 
> insta: _ajcunning_


End file.
